This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
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The Schmooze From Jewish Folk to Jazz Piano
The pianist Joe Alterman is only 23 years old, but on his new album, “Give Me The Simple Life,” he’s managed to round up an impressive array of jazz veterans to play by his side. Houston Person, the soulful tenor saxophonist, joins in on four tracks while bassist James Cammack and drummer Herlin Riley —…
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The Schmooze Music Man of the Future
You might not recognize Raymond Scott’s name, but chances are that you’ve heard his music — and that it makes you anxious. That’s because Scott’s “Powerhouse” (1937), easily his best known work, has been used to accompany scenes of mechanized peril in everything from the classic 1940s Warner Bros. cartoons to “The Ren & Stimpy…
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Culture Lou Reed’s Return to Dark Roots
“Lulu,” the unlikely collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, rapidly went from being one of the year’s most anticipated releases to being the most reviled album of 2011. USA Today called it “arty sludge” and gave it one star. Writing in Grantland, Chuck Klosterman lambasted it as “a successful simulation of how it feels to…
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The Schmooze Jews Get Musical With Ecstatic Summer
Judd Greenstein is as much an impresario as he is a composer, and sometimes the line between those roles can blur. On Saturday, June 30, on an outdoor stage in the World Financial Center Plaza in Manhattan, he performed his own music in a free concert to kick off Ecstatic Summer, produced by the arts…
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The Schmooze Top-Notch Music Festival Comes to Leo Baeck
When I found out that an ambitious new music festival in New York, the Chelsea Music Festival, was honoring the 150th birthday of Claude Debussy, I was intrigued to learn that the celebration would feature a performance at the Leo Baeck Institute at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Debussy — his high-strung, artistic,…
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The Schmooze Jewish Music Comes to Tatarstan
We can now add Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan Republic in the Russian Federation, to the list of cities that host international Jewish music festivals. Early in June, the city was the site of Tatarstan’s first-ever Jewish music festival, which featured performances by artists from the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, Austria and Cuba. Tatarstan…
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The Schmooze German University Gets Liturgical Collection
A German University is set to receive an important collection of Jewish liturgical music. The donation of the collection of Robert Singer, a Viennese cantor, will make the University of Augsburg home to one of the main collections of Jewish liturgical manuscripts and recordings in Europe. The acquisition was formally presented June 25 in a…
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The Schmooze My Lipa Schmeltzer Problem, and Ours
When Lipa Schmeltzer’s new music video, “Hang Up the Phone,” hit the Internet last week, I didn’t know what to think. What on God’s green earth was this? The video is a study in contradictions. So much so that, as Josh Nathan-Kazis observes, it enters into the Uncanny Valley between Hasidic and mainstream culture. With…
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Yiddish טשיקאַוועסן: אַן אַמאָליקער „אסתּר־המלכּה פֿאַרמעסט“ אין אַן אַרגענטינער שטעטלTidbits: A Queen Esther beauty pageant long ago in an Argentinian shtetl
די ייִדן אין באַהיִאַ בלאַנקאַ פֿלעגן יעדעס יאָר אָרגאַניזירן אַ ספּעקטאַקלדיקן פּורים־באַל.
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